The New Washington Tech Agenda

By Roy Mark |
Posted 2008-11-16

The New Washington Tech Agenda

Since technology is the key to virtually all of President-elect Barack
Obama's plans for sweeping changes in the direction of the country and the way
Washington does business with its citizens, it is not surprising Obama brings a
decidedly different technology agenda to the White House than President Bush
did eight years ago.

Bush praised technology as a key driver of the economy and worked to remove
government barriers such as laws, rules and regulations to let the free market
make its decisions on winners and losers. Obama, though, embraces technology as
the path to innovation and the future and plans to invest heavily in technology
as the key to reviving the economy.

An eWEEK look at the emerging new Washington
tech agenda:

Network Neutrality

Would innovation blossom if virtually any legal Internet service or software
program could run on any broadband network? Obama thinks so. Broadband
providers such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast do not, conjuring up nightmare
traffic management scenarios. One of Obama's
earliest tech campaign promises was to throw his support behind network
neutrality, which would prohibit discrimination in the delivery of broadband
services by providers such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.

Absent network neutrality rules, Obama said, "you could get much better
quality from the Fox News site and you'd be getting rotten service from some
mom and pop site. And that, I think, destroys one of the best things about the
Internet-which is that there is this incredible equality there."

Obama has already promised to put network neutrality proponents on the FCC,
but if Comcast wins its case against the agency (and many think it will) Obama
is likely to put his support behind federal legislation to mandate network
neutrality. His first choice, though, is to leave the issue with the FCC. All
this will take time to play out.

H1-B Visas

The technology sector has long fought for an increase in H1-B visas, a
specialized-occupation (i.e., tech-related) temporary worker. While Obama has
said he will support a temporary increase in the H1-B cap, his heart is not in
it. The president-elect, along with a number of Midwest
lawmakers, does not see it as a long-term solution to providing the high-tech
community with skilled workers.

Comprehensive immigration reform with an emphasis on retraining workers who
lose jobs to offshoring is a top priority for Obama. As with under Bush,
though, as long as H1-Bs are tied to immigration reform and its more incendiary
border security and amnesty issues, the visa issue is likely to go unresolved
with, perhaps, only a small bump in the number of H1-B visas.

Patent Reform

Patent Reform

Along with network neutrality and H1-B visas, patent reform is a top
priority for Washington
technology policy shops that want to limit infringement damages and install a
process to weed out weak patents. So far, that effort has failed in the face of
fierce opposition from the pharmaceutical, biotech and manufacturing
industries.

Tech scored a major victory last year when the U.S.
House approved the first significant overhaul of patent law in a half century,
narrowing the definition of willful infringement and limiting infringement
damage awards to the actual value of the technology involved instead of the
overall value of the completed product. The bill also created a "second window"
to challenge patents issued by the Patent and Trademark Office. The
legislation, though, died in the U.S. Senate, putting tech back at square one.

Obama, it appears, is on tech's side in the patent reform battle that will
surely resurface in the next Congress. Obama supports reform producing
"gold-plated patents" to "reduce the uncertainty and wasteful
litigation that is currently a significant drag on innovation." He's
backing opening up the patent process to citizen review and giving the Patent
and Trademark Office the resources to improve patent quality.

Broadband Rollout

You've read the numbers over and over: The United States is falling behind
other industrialized nations in overall broadband penetration, putting the United
States at a distinct disadvantage in the
global innovation race. Like Bush, Obama wants affordable, universal broadband
for all Americans. Unlike Bush, Obama may actually do something about it.

Obama wants to expand the USF (Universal Service Fund), currently a tax on
consumer telephone bills dedicated to extending phone service to rural and
other high-cost areas, to also cover broadband connections. Obama aims to
redirect USF funds in combination with promotion of next-generation broadband
facilities and new tax and loan incentives to greatly expand the reach of U.S.
high-speed Internet services.

USF reform is currently before the FCC, where commissioners are seemingly
deadlocked over expanding the system to cover broadband connections. An Obama
FCC is likely to change that.

Spectrum

Obama wants a "smarter, more efficient and more imaginative use"
of the nation's spectrum as yet another way to bring broadband to Americans.

The FCC, under Republican Kevin Martin, is already moving in that direction
with its decisions to mandate open access for portions of its recently
concluded 700MHz auction, to open the interference buffer zones between
television channels for the use
of white space devices and a proposal
for a spectrum auction in 2009 that would require the winning bidder to provide
a free wireless broadband tier to 50 percent of the United States in four years
and 95 percent of the country within 10 years.

Republicans in Congress have opposed all of those proposals. Obama's
election not only puts a Democrat in the White House, but Democrats also
strengthened their majorities in both houses. More spectrum clearly signals a
new day for wireless innovation.

Clean Energy

Clean Energy

A centerpiece of Obama's campaign, Obama is proposing that the government
invest heavily ($150 billion over the next 10 years) in smart utilities,
electrical grids and meters. The investment, Obama claims, will pay off with
the generation of five million new jobs, almost of all of them in domestic tech
firms that dominate the global smart technologies field.

A smart electrical grid, for instance, can send data to power companies
every 6 seconds instead of every 30 days, allowing the utilities to constantly
monitor energy usage and, in theory, make adjustments to conserve energy and,
potentially, reduce the need for more power plants.

Obama believes green IT is not only financially viable but also deployable
in the short term. He also promises to spend big on renewable energy sources such
as wind and solar, another growing area of technology.

That would be Silicon Valley moguls who have never
met a trade deal they didn't like, even if the murder rate among our trading
partners' labor leaders is criminal.

Health IT

Since a recent PriceWaterhouseCoopers study concluded that Obama's overhaul
of the U.S.
health care system would cost the federal government $75 billion the first year
alone, reducing the cost of health care is essential, and Obama is again
turning to technology.

Most medical records are still stored on paper with all the inherent
drawbacks that involves: coordinating care, measuring quality and reducing
medical errors. Processing paper claims also costs twice as much as processing
electronic claims.

Obama promises to invest $50 billion over the next five years to move the U.S.
health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health
information systems, including electronic health records.

Open-Source Government

Obama plans to bring the same tech-centric focus of his campaign to his new
government. Obama spoke often on the campaign trail of using technology to make
the government more open to citizens.

Among his proposals: making more government reports and data available
online; Webcasts of all government meetings; and creating tech tools to allow
users to track federal grants, contracts, lobbyist information and earmarks. He
even proposes a five-day public comment period on any legislation pending
before the White House.

Given Obama's bent to make the government more transparent to citizens, for the
tech entrepreneurs who pioneered manipulating a flood of public information
available during the campaign into actionable data, the future looks bright.